Steve Earle: Idiot Abroad

Steve Earle: Idiot Abroad: Country singer Steve Earle is in Britain soaking up the good vibes from the anti-American crowd for his sympathetic song about ‘Jihad’ Johnny Bin Walker Lindh. Of course, if you’re looking to get a ‘Monica’ from than the anti-American media then The Independent is as good a place to start as any. From paragraph three…

“The record in question is Jerusalem, Earle’s sixth album in as many years, and the first considered response to the attacks of last September by an American artist. Until its recent release, the responses fell into two broad camps: the piteous hand-wringing and heroic posturing of Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young’s last albums, or the knee-jerk redneck anger of Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)”, which Earle believes panders to the worst instincts of his countrymen. In all cases, the tragedy was viewed as something that happened to America, rather than as an action with a much wider and more complex context to consider – a striking illustration of the self-obsession afflicting a country whose inhabitants have so little regard for the outside world that fewer than 30 per cent of them have even bothered applying for a passport.”

Gee, why would we think 9/11, “happened to America?” Maybe because it did? And what “complex context” is this idiot talking about? That Europeans spent a few days mourning our losses before going back to their grousing about America? Oh and has he considered that maybe we don’t have passports because it’s not worth our trouble to go see Big “freaking” Ben or the Eiffel Tower if we also have to listen to 398484328 snide comments from Europeans about what they think is wrong with Americans?

“We don’t travel outside our own country,” agrees Earle. “Most Western European countries have been the most powerful country in the world, and know that it doesn’t last for ever, and that there’s life after that, and we’re still carrying ourselves as if we’re gonna be the big dog for ever, and we’re pissing people off. The question that we’re not asking is, ‘What made everybody hate us so much?’ I don’t think we deserved it [the attack] – no one deserves it – but I think it’s a question that needs asking.”

Has Steve Earle ever asked himself why so many people hate him? Has the Independent? Has France? Has Germany? Hell, have the governments of Europe asked themselves why so many Americans think that with the exception of Britain, they’re all snide, ungrateful, backbiters, who want to ride America’s coattails without having to put in their fair share of the risk or treasure? When is someone in Europe going to start asking THAT question?

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“So far, his (Earle’s) enshrined right to free speech has allowed him to speak his mind openly on such matters; but under the sweeping provisions of the so-called Patriot Act, he could probably be arrested and held without trial for giving aid and succour to the enemy by criticising the President’s plans.

That Patriot Act gets more and more powerful every day. Now all you have to do is to criticize the President’s plans to be arrested and held without trial. Undoubtably, you’ll be hauled away and labotimized by a secret police set up to enforce John Ashcroft’s imaginary camp plan. I hope Steve Earle actually believes that garbage because it means he won’t come back.

“Boarding his flight from the US, he (Earle) noticed every single such person publicly pulled aside for additional screening, simply, he feels, to make their white, Christian fellow passengers feel safer.

“That’s racism, and that’s why it’s being done, whether they admit it or not,” he fumes. “To me, that’s un-American. After all, America was built on immigration; the only way we could do what we did as rapidly as we did was by embracing immigrants.”

Yeah, we’re only screening Middle-Easterners which is why Al Gore, an 86 year old WW2 veteran w/ his Medal of Honor, and this guy all got screened. So airport security could, “make their white, Christian fellow passengers feel safer.”

You can read the rest of this idiotic interview here, but I’m not sure you’ll be missing much if you don’t.